The Major and the Minor

One of Mrs. Salad's Netflix pix, and she made a good choice this time. I
surprised myself with how charmed and amused I was while watching this
classic screwball comedy.

As the movie begins, Miss
Susan Applegate (Ginger Rogers) is not making it in 1941 New York City.
She's an in-home scalp-massager (really), and when a randy client
(Robert Benchley) gets the wrong idea, she decides to pack it in, go
back to small-town Iowa, and settle for the young man who's (apparently)
still waiting for her.

Problem: she can't afford the full-fare train ticket from NYC to Iowa.
So she poses as an almost-12 year old! She manages that well enough to
get on board, but her fraud is soon detected, and she has to deceive
Major Philip Kirby (Ray Milland), a teacher at an Illinois military
academy, in order to avoid getting tossed off the train.

Hence the Major/Minor title. Complications ensue, of course, since this
is a screwball comedy. Susan finds herself enmeshed in the workings of
Kirby's school; she fools everyone, save for Kirby's fiancee's younger
sister.

Yes, there's a little bit of dancing. I think this was part of the Hays
Code: if Ginger Rogers is in a movie, she's gotta dance.

This was Billy Wilder's American directoral debut, and he also
co-wrote.

Our "phony" hit counts are dwarfed by the "scary" hit counts. For
Hillary and Trump, it's an order of magnitude difference!
What
that means, in terms of the country's mood is obvious: months of
negative ads predicting the dire results of the Other Person winning has
turned us into a nation of quivering sheep huddled in a dark corner.

I tend to favor the "Wizard of Oz" hypothesis myself: people find these guys
scary, but they're actually just phony.

But I could be wrong.
So let's dip into the Google results to see what people are saying:

They say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and so it is
with Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. The son of the Republican
presidential hopeful and his first wife Ivana Trump has got himself into
a spot of trouble by using a bizarre Halloween-urban-legend-esque
allegory to compare Syrian refugees to a bowl of Skittles. “If I had a
bowl of Skittles and I told you three would kill you, would you take a
handful?” read an image he tweeted, with a picture of a big bowl of the
popular sweets for emphasis. “That’s our Syrian refugee problem.”

While many candidates appeal to the passions and patriotism of their
crowds, Mr. Trump appears unrivaled in his ability to forge bonds with a
sizable segment of Americans over anxieties about a changing nation,
economic insecurities, ferocious enemies and emboldened minorities (like
the first black president, whose heritage and intelligence he has all
but encouraged supporters to malign).

From that last link:
"Daisy", now 52 years older, says, predictably "And to see that coming
forward in this election is really scary."

So what about Hillary, our second-place finisher? Quite frankly, the
stuff that Google turns up is pretty mild in comparison. Theory: people
opposed to Hillary tend to subscribe to the
Bene
Gesserit litany against fear: "Fear is the mind-killer". And we
don't like our minds killed.

If anything goes badly wrong in the world over the next four years — not
terribly unlikely under any president, given all the upheaval in Europe
and China — I'm worried that voters will look at the webs of influence
surrounding Clinton and be more inclined to be suspicious that problems
affecting their livelihoods have arisen because of self-dealing by
elites.

Suggestion: replace "be more inclined to be suspicious" with "correctly
conclude".

Hillary Clinton is 66 [now 69]
years old, but age doesn’t scare me. What scares
me is that she reminds me of Doloris Umbridge in the Harry Potter books;
she knows what is best for you and she will make you understand it. I
can see her now forcing parents to carve her name into their own
children–figuratively, if not in practice. What also scares me about
Hillary is that she has been a sideline member of the political machine
from 1979 until 2013 and she is so far out of touch that she believes
her own hype and thinks she is the gift we deserve and need. 22 years as
the wife of a Governor then President, a Senator for 8 years, and
finally Secretary of State for 4 years. She has ridden the coat tails of
her husband through all these events and the Clinton machine is a
powerful political machine. Is it enough to get her into the White
House? I dearly hope not.

Donald Trump is a clear menace to our democratic form of government, the
rule of law and my James Madison bobblehead. The teenage Ted Cruz could
recite the entire Constitution from memory. Trump wouldn't know it from
Two Corinthians.

But it's not exactly safe to entrust your copy of the Constitution to
Hillary Clinton, either. You might get it back with some parts missing
or mutilated—like the First Amendment and the Second.

I sometimes think she'd look for a way to
quarter soldiers in houses without the owner's consent, just to
have another
Amendment
to traduce.

Presumptive Green Party nominee Jill Stein believes Hillary Clinton
would be a more dangerous president than Donald Trump, because while Mr.
Trump says “scary things,” the former secretary of state actually does
them.

Spoiler: not a single one of the "scary" facts is actually scary. ("He
Supports the Keystone XL Pipeline." Eek!? "A President Johnson Would Get
Rid Of Obamacare." Aieee!?).

The awesome fact:

Johnson has run 17 marathons, four Ironman Triathlons, is an active rock
climber, and has climbed the seven highest summits on every continent,
including Mount Everest (just after breaking a leg!). His doctor writes
that Johnson, who weighs 172 pounds and has normal blood pressure and
pulse, exercises about an hour a day.”

When I think about exercising, I often say: "Nah; Gary's doing enough
for both of us."

Wishing you a non-scary Halloween. Or at least one that's less scary
than Election Day.

The Phony Campaign

2016-10-30 Update

FBI Director James Covey announced that he's (let us not quibble) re-opening the
criminal investigation into Hillary's shoddy e-mail practices, the
Republicans cheer, the Democrats jeer, but what about the
PredictWise
bettors? Her win probability has plummeted to … 87%, four points down
from last Monday. They seem to be taking things in stride.

Over at
FiveThirtyEight,
their polls-only forecast gives her a 78.6% shot, down about 5 points
from last Monday. (But maybe when more polls come in over the next few
days…)

This week's Getty illustration: Hillary, when the indictment comes in.

And the phony poll standings show a general decrease in phoniness hits
for everyone. Which is inexplicable, unless those Google hit counts are
meaningless! (Which, oh yeah, they are.)

Trump made hits this week by griping about "rigged" polls, who he claims
are oversampling Democrats at the command of John Podesta:

Here's how all of this affects you: When the people who control the
political power in our society can rig investigations like her
investigation was rigged, can rig polls -- you see these phoney
[sic] polls,
and rig the media, they can wield absolute power over your life, your
economy and your country. And benefit big time by it.

The argument: polls that show a decisive Hillary win demoralize
Trump voters, who assume a position at their nearest dive bar
instead of going to vote.

Ah, but what about the scads of lazy Hillary voters who see her lead and
say: "Ah, she's gonna win without me," and stay home?

I have little love for left-leaning Politifact, but they rate
Trump's claim
"Pants
on Fire", and their explanation seems credible even to this skeptic.

I find it somewhat suprising that Jill's worth may be "as much as" $8.5
million. That's some cabbage right there. And apparently she hasn't made
it by investing in exclusively socially conscious companies. Her mutual funds
invest in nasty companies like Exxon, Chevron, Goldman Sachs, etc. Who
do you think you are, Jill? Hillary?

My candidate, Gary Johnson, seems
distinctly
unmellow
these days. He had an interview with a Guardian reporter, and …

But then Johnson was asked about his tax policy. The reporter said he
hasn’t found a single economist who agrees with him.

Johnson lost it and shouted at him about marijuana legalization and how
people told him it couldn’t be done. When asked about what this has to
do with taxation, he said, “It’s leadership. It is leadership.”

Video at the link, your own call on whether Gary should go back on his
legal-in-some-states meds. I'm still voting for him.

I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence
incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers,
frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and
obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it inordinately
wasteful, extravagant, dishonest? Then so is every other form of
government: all alike are enemies to laborious and virtuous men. Is
rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality
since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out
that rascality is necessary to human government, and even to
civilization itself – that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a
colossal swindle. I do not know: I report only that when the suckers are
running well the spectacle is infinitely exhilarating. But I am, it may
be, a somewhat malicious man: my sympathies, when it comes to suckers,
tend to be coy. What I can’t make out is how any man can believe in
democracy who feels for and with them, and is pained when they are
debauched and made a show of.

Related is the well-known poker aphorism: "If you don’t see a sucker at
the table, you’re it."

And more tweet-sized wisdom from Iowahawk:

Don't let your loathing for one candidate cloud your judgment on how loathsome the other one is.

The Nice Guys

A pretty good indication that a movie's going to be good, or at least
interesting: directed and co-written by Shane Black.

It is set in the funkiness and moral rot of mid-70s Los Angeles. In the
opening scene, that kid from Iron Man 3 swipes one of his dad's
porn mags (for our younger audience: a magazine with pictures of naked
women; how retro) and is perusing a picture of one "Misty Mountains".
When, unexpectedly, a small car plummets off the nearby freeway,
crashing entirely through the young man's house. When he checks out the
wreckage, the dying victim is … Misty Mountains, herself, posed just
like in the mag, except for a lot more blood.

An ultra-Dickensian coincidence, to be sure, although one Dickens might
not have come up with himself. Whatever. We're off to concentrate on our
protagonists: Healy (Russell Crowe), whose profession is beating up
people for money. And March (Ryan Gosling), a widowed
sad-sack semi-sleazy private eye, way
too fond of booze and cigarettes, bringing up a precocious 14-year-old
daughter on his own.

March is not above taking clients' money for worthless cases, namely
investigating whether Misty is still alive.
He and Healy are drawn together when Healy is hired to dissuade him from
even a bumbling investigation. Gradually, they become aware that a lot
of people involved in shooting Misty's final porn movie are turning up
dead.

Amid all the carnage, there's a lot of hilarity. According to
IMDB, this was originally going to be a TV series. (And it's
slightly reminiscent of the series The Good Guys.)

Against Democracy

Against Democracy?
You might think this might be a very short book. Page one:
Democracy has given
us Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as major party nominees this year.
Democracy sucks. Q.E.D., baby!

But Jason Brennan, a professor at
Georgetown U, probably wanted to deliver a more scholarly takedown, and
he has. It's difficult to avoid noting that, even though
a lot of the book was probably written before 2016, it's
hard to read it without finding current events illuminating and
supporting his thesis.

Brennan is immune to the feel-goodness and bovine sacredness of
the word "democracy". Let's ignore all that, he says, and ask the sober
question: what does democracy have to recommend it? Not that much, he
argues. As individuals, the democratic poltical power we wield is
insignificant, but it does tend to "stultify and corrupt" us, turning
us into "civic enemies" with excuses to despise our neighbors.

Worse, our votes are woefully outnumbered by the thoughtless and
irresponsible. (The data is irrefutable.)
What possible argument could there be allowing those
masses to hold political sway over us? We wouldn't pick a random person
from the phonebook to do our plumbing or to remove our appendix — why do
we entertain the idea that they're entitled to have a say in national
issues of peace, prosperity, and liberties?

Brennan's an entertaining and accessible writer, aiming (I think) at the
bright-undergraduate level. I appreciated the Monty Python reference to
the "women lying in ponds distributing swords" form of government. More
seriously, he divides the populace into "Hobbits", "Hooligans", and
"Vulcans". Hobbits are apathetic and ignorant about matters political.
Hooligans are the "rabid sports fans of politics"; they are too
interested, cheering on their side, unable or unwilling to consider
alternatives. Finally, Vulcans are the holy grail of political
participants, making their views dependent on evidence, self-aware of
their own limitations and uncertainties. (But even Vulcans, I think, can
have incompatible political visions and values.)

Brennan convincingly argues that Vulcans are nearly invisible and have
at best minor influence.

The cliché is: democracy is the worst system of government, except for
all the others. Brennan feels the force of that argument, but asks us to
consider various possible schemes of epistocratic government;
granting a larger share of political powers to those who (in some
manner) shown themselves more likely to exercise them responsibly.

One approach I wish Brennan would have considered more carefully:
instead of restricting the political power of voters, approach
things at the candidate side. A requirement for running would be to
subject yourself to a battery of tests to measure your intelligence
(maybe an IQ test); general knowledge and academic achievement (something
like the SAT); maybe a quiz on current affairs (where's Aleppo?) or
general civic knowledge; maybe specialized queries on economics
or science.

You wouldn't disqualify anyone based on test scores, but you would
publicize everyone's scores. Would voters pay attention? Maybe enough on
the margin to improve results.

The actress said that her rejecting Trump then led to
a story in the National
Enquirer, which instead claimed Trump said he wouldn’t
date the actress because she was “too short.”

Ms. Hayek is, indeed, short; 5 foot 2, according to IMDB. Is that
s a credible excuse for not dating her? We're only hearing her side of
the story, sure, but Trump sounds like a high school petulant loser.

“We are going to ask the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair
share,” she said at Wednesday’s
debate. “And there is no evidence whatsoever that that will slow
down or diminish our growth.”

Aside: to repeat a point I've made in the past, I despise the
intelligence-insulting lie embedded in that small word "ask". If/when a
tax increase is passed, nobody will be "asked" to cough up more money to
the US Treasury. That money will be demanded. By implying
otherwise, Hillary might as well add: "I'm wording things that way
because I think anyone listening is stupid enough to believe me."

That lie is nearly always accompanied by the bullshit phrase "fair
share", which I've also loathed for a long time. Exactly how much
is that fair share? Why, my friends, it always really means "more than they're
paying now".

In 2013, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers (those with AGIs below
$36,841) earned 11.49 percent of total AGI. This group of taxpayers paid
approximately $34 billion in taxes, or 2.78 percent of all income taxes
in 2013.

In contrast, the top 1 percent of all taxpayers (taxpayers with AGIs of
$428,713 and above), earned 19.04 percent of all AGI in 2013, but paid
37.80 percent of all federal income taxes.

In 2013, the top 1 percent of taxpayers accounted for more income taxes
paid than the bottom 90 percent combined. The top 1 percent of taxpayers
paid $465 billion, or 37.80 percent of all income taxes, while the
bottom 90 percent paid $372 billion, or 30.20 percent of all income
taxes.

It's my devout wish that someone would corner Hillary, or anyone else
braying about "fair share", show these numbers, and ask: Is that "fair"?
What would the numbers have to look like to make them "fair"?

But I've been wishing that for a long time, and I don't think I'll see
it in my lifetime.

Er, where was I? Oh, yeah. Continuing with Hillary's claim that there's
"no evidence whatsoever" enacting her proposals "will slow down or
diminish our growth": that turns out to be a lie as well:

Two independent analyses conclude that by raising taxes so dramatically
on the wealthy, her program will crimp investment and economic growth,
though they disagree on how much.

Clinton, whose candidacy is largely built on her foreign policy
experience, described the Iraqi city of Mosul as a "border city," when
it is in fact, 75 miles from the nearest border in one direction, and
100 miles from the border of Syria in another direction. As U.S.
News and World Report's Steven
Nelson noted, "Ireland is closer to Wales. Montreal is nearer to New
York state and Damascus, Syria's capital, is closer to Israel – either
its de facto or internationally recognized borders."

Speaking of "fair", shouldn't all candidates get asked the same set of
"gotcha" questions? Again, not holding my breath.

Never Go Back

One more off the top of the Lee Child to-be-read subpile. By sheer
coincidence, I read it near-simultaneously with the release of the
new Tom Cruise movie based on the book. Given the reviews, I'll probably
wait for the DVD.

About four books previous in the series, while dealing with nasty
people in a South Dakota
winter, Reacher needed some
investigative assistance from his old MP unit, now based just outside
Arlington Cemetery. This caused him to interact over the phone with
Susan Turner, the new commander. She was helpful and funny; she also
admired the dent in her desk Reacher had made years previous by slamming
some jerk's head into it.

So, after the South Dakota events, Reacher decided to visit Susan; this
wasn't easy, as his usual propensity for detecting and defusing massive
criminal conspiracies kept delaying him. But in this book, he makes it!
Only to find that Susan's been relieved of command due to accusations of
bribery. Complicating things further, Reacher is accused of delivering
an (eventually) fatal beating to an LA gang banger long ago.

And, oh yeah: also a paternity suit.

Needless to say, both Susan and Reacher are being framed by mysterious
powerful forces that don't hesitate to ruin, or murder, people who might
uncover their nefarious schemes. Name-clearing involves first breaking
out of the Army's clutches, then a peril-filled road trip to find out
the facts behind the paternity thing.

Unsurprisingly, a page-turner. Somewhat surprisingly (possible minor
spoiler follows, mouse-select to reveal):
I'm pretty sure
Reacher doesn't actually kill any of his adversaries in this book.
That might be a first in the series.

Light of the World

I've finally "caught up" with James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux novels.
(It's taken decades, but I did it!) Light of the World came out
back in 2013; Mr. Burke's latest is in his other series concentrating on
the Holland family. Which is also good, but I don't want to get
involved.

(Not that there aren't connections: one of the primary characters here,
Wyatt Dixon, is a crossover from Bitterroot, a Billy Bob Holland
book. The connection isn't mentioned or even alluded to here.)

Anyway: the book finds Dave, wife Molly, and daughter Alafair up in
Montana, taking a break from Louisiana seediness and violence. Also in
tow is Dave's lifelong buddy Clete Purcel; soon to appear is Gretchen
Horowitz, Clete's rediscovered daughter. (After a horrific childhood,
and a brief career as a Mafia hitter, Gretchen has found a new career in
making movies.) Danger soon infests this idyllic scene, as Alafair is
nicked by an arrow while out for a jog. Whodunnit? But that's not all: a
young Native American woman has gone missing, and she just happens to be
the adopted daughter of an oil company scion.

And, in addition, the gruesome serial killer, Asa Surette is missing and
presumed burnt up, as a result of a collision between a prison transport
bus and an oil truck. But is he really dead? Signs point to no, and if
he's alive, he has a serious animosity for Alafair, who interviewed him
in prison.

As always, Mr. Burke's spectacular prose punches the reader in the face
with descriptions of natural beauty, harrowing terror, and ongoing
violence. And dialog: I sometimes wish I could talk like his characters.
But I'm sure people up here in New Hampshire wouldn't take to it.

You, Me and Dupree

Oh, dear Lord, it's awful. A "comedy" that didn't elicit a single laugh,
chortle, or giggle from me.

Worse, the people who came up with the movie title do not employ the
Oxford Comma.

Anyway: Mrs. Salad was out of town, and we (somehow) were gifted with
this 10-year-old DVD, which she saw no interest in watching, ever. So…

Molly (Kate Hudson) and Carl (Matt Dillon) are newlyweds. Best Man
Dupree (Owen Wilson) is
Carl's longtime best buddy, but he's currently an underachiever, to put
it mildly; to attend the wedding, he's lost his job and domicile. So
we can put Dupree up in our house until he's back on his feet, right,
honey?

Added complication: Molly's dad
(Michael Douglas) is unimpressed with Carl, to the extent that he
recommends vasectomy to Carl.

None of the main characters are interesting or likeable. Nobody ever
says anything funny. The PG-13 rating prevents Kate Hudson from getting
naked.
There are unexpected developments, sure, but in
order to say "I didn't see that coming" you have to care enough about
the plot to imagine what might be coming next.

On the back of the DVD box, one Lesley Nagy, film critic of KBWB-TV in
San Francisco, is quoted: "IF YOU LIKE WEDDING CRASHERS, YOU'LL
LOVE YOU, ME AND DUPREE!" Let me just caution you: Lesley is a
liar. Maybe not as bad as Hillary, but she's right up there. For I liked
Wedding Crashers just fine, but ….

The Phony Campaign

2016-10-17 Update

PredictWise
has Hillary with an astonishing lock on the Presidency (91% probability,
up from 86% last week).
FiveThirtyEight
is slightly more dubious: 83.9-89.1%, depending on your choice of
methodology. At right: the Trump campaign.

Professor Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek pens
Another
Open Letter to Hillary Clinton, caused by her boobish agreement with
Donald Trump on prosecuting Chinese steelmakers. This is nothing new;
Boudreaux quotes a 112-year-old speech from Winston Churchill debunking
the trade know-nothingism of his time. Nothing much has changed.

I don’t for a moment expect Churchill’s words to cause you to rethink
your hostility to free trade; you crave power, not truth. But I do want
you to know that you and Mr. Trump are merely the latest drum majors in
a long, shameful parade of charlatans and scammers who absurdly promise
the masses that greater prosperity is to be had if only they’ll agree to
pay higher prices for the goods and services they consume.

At this point our best hope is that Hillary's merely a shameless
liar on this issue, that she really knows better.

Geraghty obseves that
partisan Democrats (containing a good chunk of Bernie Sanders
supporters) now find themselves having to "swallow their pride, put
aside their concerns and worries, and pretend [Hillary] is noble and
trustworthy." Despite daily revelations to the contrary.

Diehard Republicans probably have it worse, having to support a
lecherous
blowhard, a floater of delusional conspiracy theories, etc.

Of course everybody’s stressed. One of two bad options – a
man and a woman who do not reflect the values and sense of ethics of
most decent Americans — is all but certain to be president, and lots of
people feel the need to pretend that they want these bad options, lest
the worse one win. What’s more, people are realizing that they’re going
to have to validate one of these people by giving her or him
their vote.

Not me, Jim.

David Boaz is roughly on the same wavelength as Geraghty in his
diagnosis of
"Trump
Derangement Syndrome", a coinflip counterpart to the well-known Bush
Derangement Syndrome of years past.

What do we say about conservatives – people who believe, variously, in
limited government, free markets, Judeo-Christian values, and the
importance of character in public life – who have been forced to utter
absurdities in defense of Donald Trump? It’s one thing to say that
Hillary Clinton and her Supreme Court justices and her 4,000 bureaucrats
are on net worse than Trump and whatever menagerie he brings to the
White House. But when free-market conservatives find themselves
enthusiastically defending the most protectionist presidential candidate
since Pat Buchanan, or Christian conservatives are forced to say that
personal character isn’t really a big issue for them, I fear that
derangement has set in.

Examples follow. But the bottom line, friends, is: Politics corrupts
us. I'm reading a book that convincingly makes that point, should
have a brief description up in a few days.

Which reminds me: Jon Ronson is a journalist who keeps finding himself
in bizarre situations. One of those, years back, found him infiltrating
the infamous Bohemian Grove retreat, where megamoguls and famous
celebrities gather to engage in bizarre rituals. His unreliable ally
back then was Alex Jones, radio-show nutbar behind the
Infowars conspiracy site.

Today, of course, Jones is one of the drivers behind the Trump
candidacy. Ronson was able to reconnect with Jones, also meet the
nearly-as-wacky political consultant Roger Stone, and explore the
crazy sordidness that's actually influencing the Trump campaign.
(The recent talk about the election being "rigged" is pure Jones.)

Ronson has released a short e-book,
The Elephant in the Room,
telling the tale, and—whoa—it's free to Amazon
Prime users. Recommended; Ronson's clearly on the left, but that
doesn't obscure his powers of observation.
(If you use the link at right, I'll get a
small percentage of your $0.00! Thanks in advance!)

And there are a lot of things to dislike about PETA, but this is not one of
them:

Live Bait

Number two in the "Monkeewrench" series, recommended to me by my wise
and perceptive sister. Set (mostly) in Minneapolis, the first book
described how a bunch of software wizards (company name: Monkeewrench)
got involved with a string of local murders, and their interaction with
the nice Minnesota (and Wisconsin) cops trying to bring an end to the
illegal carnage.

This one is more of a police procedural, with only one of the (surviving)
Monkeewrench gang playing a small but vital role. After a relatively
homicide-free Minneapolis
winter, there's suddenly a rash of unusual murder victims:
old folks living in upscale Uptown. The initial M.O.'s are various and
confusing. But poor dead
Morey Gilbert was widely regarded as a saint in his
community, always offering kind words and gentle help to his
acquaintances. He also has a concentration camp number tattooed on his
arm, wonder if that could have anything to do with it? His wife seems to
have known something like this might happen, why? His estranged son is a bitter
drunk, hm, suspect?

Many characters have their own secrets. As with the first book, it
strikes me as a tad contrived, but that's OK, because the writing is
pretty close to page-turning first-rate.

The book itself was a little beat up, obtained from an Amazon reseller.
Published at $7.50 suggested retail,
It has a 25¢ sticker, looks like from a yard sale, and a ".50"
sticker, looks like a used book store. And (finally) I paid $4.28
including shipping. Will it go on to further retail adventures? Who knows?

The Secret of Our Success

How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

Yet another Interlibrary Loan book, this one from Tufts. I believe I put
it into my to-be-read list when I came across the author, Joseph
Henrich,
while reading Matt Ridley's
The
Evolution of Everything.

It's a fine "big idea" book, as you can tell from the subtitle. What
unlikely process, asks Henrich, has brought the human species to
dominate more terrestrial environments than any other land mammal? We
aren't very strong, not very fast, and not that good at tree-climbing.
Why weren't our ancestors all Tiger Chow
millions of years ago?

Well, we're smart, you say. But Henrich argues convincingly that
we aren't that smart either. His thought experiment: dump fifty
humans and fifty capuchin monkeys into a central African jungle. ("To be
kind we would allow the humans—but not the monkeys—to wear clothes.") Come
back two years later and it's a safe bet that there will be a lot fewer
surviving humans than monkeys. There are a couple of tragic real-world
examples presented: groups of "civilized" humans accidentally finding
themselves in an environment in which they rapidly die off, even in the
midst of native populations that are doing just fine.

Instead, Henrich argues, we're uniquely well-suited to cultural
evolution, the process by which knowledge and skills are transmitted
from one generation to the next. In addition, good old genetic evolution
co-evolves with the culture, to the extent that our species'
hardware/firmware is optimized
to handle cooked food, written language, throwing small, heavy objects with
deadly accuracy (Craig Kimbrel excluded), run long distances, and the
like.

It's a wide-ranging tale, and Henrich runs through his argument with
clarity and occasional understated humor. As is typical with these sorts
of books, a variety of research is cited from anthropology, psychology,
economics, and related fields. Some of these results I'd heard before,
most not.

As with most results of "dumb luck" evolution, the beneficiaries
often don't understand "the secret of their success". I was able to
impress my nutritionist wife with the mystery of why South American
natives put wood ash (or burned seashells) into their corn dishes before
serving. Why? The alkalinity of the ask
makes the niacin in the corn available to the
human digestive system.

When corn was introduced into "civilized" countries, this technique was
discarded, since nobody knew why it was useful. The result: pellagra,
caused by niacin deficiency. And (tragically) the cause of pellagra
remained a mystery until the mid-20th century.

Also very mind-bending was Henrich's discussion of the brain's
"firmware" for recognizing written language. We English-readers can look
at (for example) "READ" and "read" and know within milliseconds:
that's the same word, even though the letters don't look anything alike.
Multiply that feat over myriad font shapes and sizes. How could
that skill, developed only a few thousand years ago,
be a result of sluggish Darwinian processes? Cultural evolution, baby!

And there's a lot more. As always: there are controversies, and Henrich
is only giving his side. So maybe not the last word on this topic.
Nevertheless, a fun and fascinating read.

The Phony Campaign

2016-10-10 Update

At right: the Trump campaign. Sorry, Trumpkins.

PredictWise
has Hillary Clinton with an 86% shot at being President, which means
Donald Trump is still technically alive at 14%, because math. As I type,
he's doing better than the Boston Red Sox, who are judged to have a mere
5% probability of winning the
World Series.

Over at
FiveThirtyEight,
Hillary's at 77.6-86.1% (depending on methodology). The Red Sox are at
5%
there
as well.

And in the Phony Poll, Jill Stein comes crashing back to earth, as the
Google Gods realize the true phonies this year are…

For our purposes, coverage of Trump's 2005 "extremely
lewd conversation"
demonstrated the interesting
rules various news outlets have for obscuring bad words.
For example, the WaPo goes PG-13 in this paragraph:

“I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there. And she was
married,” Trump says. “Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the
big phony
tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.”

… but elsewhere in the article, it's "s---", "f---", and "p---y".

The bazongas in question belong to Ms. Nancy O'Dell, host of
Entertainment Tonight, a show I'm pretty sure I haven't watched
in decades. Her
official
statement makes no mention of the phoniness allegation (although
she's apparently denied it in the past,
and Googling does not reveal anything on this important issue
other than rumor and tawdry
speculation):

"Politics aside, I’m saddened that these comments still exist in our
society at all. When I heard the comments yesterday, it was
disappointing to hear such objectification of women. The conversation
needs to change because no female, no person, should be the subject of
such crass comments, whether or not cameras are rolling. Everyone
deserves respect no matter the setting or gender. As a woman who has
worked very hard to establish her career, and as a mom, I feel I must
speak out with the hope that as a society we will always strive to be
better."

It's probably ungentlemanly to observe that the
former beauty
queen has "established her career" on her extraordinary good looks,
so her whole "objectification" complaint rings a little hollow.

When will we know that "society" has successfully striven "to be better"
on this score? When
Rachel
Dratch
becomes an Entertainment Tonight
co-host.

Speaking of beauty queens: Steve Harvey, well known for
botching
his gig as host of a recent Miss Universe pageant, interviewed Hillary
back in February, during the heat of the primary campaign. You wouldn't
expect him to ask hardball questions.
But, as recently revealed in a leaked memo, Hillary was guaranteed
an even more comfy ride:

Talk show host Steve Harvey provided Hillary Clinton’s campaign with
the exact questions he would ask of Clinton during a February interview,
according to an internal campaign memo sent a week before the interview
and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

An impressively phony moment:

“During this segment Steve will take a trip down memory lane with YOU to
talk about the different moments of YOUR life displayed in the
photographs below,” the memo explained photos of Clinton that Harvey
pulled up on screen as she discussed her childhood, education,
relationship with her husband, and election to the U.S. Senate.

Clinton feigned surprise throughout the interview. “Oh boy. Oh my
goodness,” she exclaimed as Harvey displayed a photo of her at 12 years
old.

That's show biz. Also, consistently rendering YOU and YOUR in uppercase
is apparently a thing.

At a Hillary Clinton town hall yesterday in Haverford, Pennsylvania,
a 15 year old girl was supposedly "chosen at random" to
ask a question of the former Secretary of State. But, the
well-scripted performance raised some suspicion with a YouTuber named Spanglevision who
decided to dig a little deeper. And, wouldn't you know it,
the "random"
participant was none other than child actor, Brennan Leach, whose father
just happens to be Pennsylvania democratic State Senator Daylin Leach. Oh,
and in case it wasn't obvious, Daylin supports Hillary for
president...shocking.

Yeah, I think that's credible. Could do without all the bold and
underlines.

Note that
Snopes
attempts to debunk this, but the best they can do is "unproven". I also
found their wording of the "claim" to be a little dishonest:

Claim: Hillary Clinton "hired" a
child actor to be "planted" in the audience during a Town Hall campaign
event.

I'm bothered by Snopes putting "hired" in quotes, as if someone was
making the specific charge of money changing hands for little Brennan's
performance.
I may be missing something, but I don't see that word at Zero Hedge.
Is Snopes attempting to rebut an allegation that nobody's actually made?

Jacob Sullum watched last evening's debate, and solves the mystery:
"Clinton
Shows How She Manages to Be Less Trusted Than Trump". Casting her e-mail
negligence as a
"mistake" is well-known. The new
inconvenience that she needed to explain away last night: her two-faced
speech confession, kept secret until Wikileaked, was "So you need both a
public and a private position."
Her focus-grouped response: hey, it's exactly the same thing Lincoln
did in that Spielberg movie to get the Thirteenth Amendment passed!

Sullum rebuts:

Assuming the Wikileaks excerpts are accurate (and Clinton is not
claiming they're not), that is a serious distortion of what Clinton
actually said in her speech. She was not talking about tailoring your
arguments to your audience; she was talking about bribing legislators
with promises of lucrative jobs, which she argued was justified by the
importance of getting Congress to approve the 13th Amendment. More
generally, she said such tactics, although "unsavory," are both
necessary and appropriate, although it is best to conceal them from the
public, since otherwise people might "get a little nervous."

It is understandable
that Clinton would prefer not to admit endorsing this Machiavellian
view, especially given the broader
implications of saying one thing publicly and another privately. But
by pretending she did not say what she said, she only compounds the
impression that she is slippery, two-faced, and untrustworthy.

Had I been Jacob's editor, I might have suggested replacing "only
compounds the impression" with "demonstrates yet again".

The Phony Campaign

2016-10-02 Update

As I type, PredictWise
gives Hillary a 79% chance of winning (up a whopping 9 points from last
week) and FiveThirtyEight
calculates her probability at 67.3-74.4% (up … erm … also a lot from
last week).

This week's Getty picture: the Trump campaign.

In phony news: Jill Stein maintains her firm lead, Trump continues to
edge Hillary for the coveted second place spot, with hapless Gary
Johnson far behind in fourth:

Most honest people would admit that
both Major Party candidates display serious character
flaws. But, as a bonus, their positions on major issues are
also odious, dishonest, and/or ignorant.

It's important, therefore, for Major Party sycophants to warn people
away from those Other Party candidates.
We've seen examples before;
this week's hit job is from Michael Tomasky, writing in the Daily
Beast:
"Why
No One Should Vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein".

But here’s the catch. The libertarian live-and-let-live credo doesn’t
apply just to young people who’d like to blow a doob in a public park
(that’s how we put it back in my day, sonny, and I’m not going to make
any phony attempt to be hip). It applies to polluting corporations. It
applies to corporations and individuals who want to make unlimited dark
money contributions to political campaigns. It applies to the forces
pushing free trade. It applies to employers who don’t want to be
nickel-and-dimed over paying their workers a minimum wage. It applies to
gun manufacturers, and to the National Rifle Association.

Discounting Tomasky's overheated, dishonest rhetoric, his shocking truth
is that the Libertarian Party candidate holds (some) libertarian
positions. Film at 11.

And those stoners in the park couldn't possibly buy into that
crap about personal liberty, limited government, and free markets!
That's not cool, man.

While Giuliani applauded the Republican nominee for showing "admirable
restraint regarding Hillary Clinton's phony attempt at feminism," he
revealed Trump was ready to attack Clinton for taking money from
"countries that stone women."

"You take money from countries that imprison women. You take money from
countries where women can't drive," Giuliani continued as he laid into
the former secretary of state. "You take millions and hundreds of
millions of dollars from countries that treat women as chattel."

“She said very bad things about me,” he said
on Fox News. “Worse than what she said, she’s taking these phony
ads, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on phony ads, and I think
it’s a disgrace that she’s allowed [to do that].”

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